India’s largest telecom provider, Reliance Jio on Friday said its March-quarter net profit rose 1.7% sequentially to ₹4,716 crore from ₹4,638 crore in the December quarter. On a yearly basis, its profit grew by 13%.
Its revenue from operations for the quarter also grew 1.7% sequentially to ₹23,394 crore as compared to ₹22,998 crore in the previous quarter. On a yearly basis, it increased 12%.
For FY23, Reliance Jio’s net profit stood at ₹18,207 crore, increasing from ₹14,817 crore in FY22.
The company attributed the annual growth in revenue from operations to the full impact of tariff hike, ramp-up of wireline services and continued subscriber addition for mobility services.
Reliance Jio’s depreciation and amortisation expenses have increased to ₹4,982 crore in Q3 FY23 from ₹4,810 crore in the previous quarter due to higher network utilisation and incremental addition to gross block, it said in an exchange filing.
The average revenue per user (ARPU) grew marginally to ₹178.8 in the March quarter from ₹178.2 in the previous quarter while it increased nearly 7% on a yearly basis.
The ARPU came below analysts expectations of ₹179-181.
The telecom operator said that ARPU increased due to impact of tariff hike, better subscriber mix and data add-ons within select customer cohorts.
Reliance Jio added more subscribers in the March quarter as compared to the previous December quarter. It added 6.4 million net subscribers in Q4 compared to 5.3 million in the previous quarter.
With this, its total customer base as on March 31, 2022 stood at 439.3 million.
Currently, Reliance Jio is busy processing network deployments across the country for 5G services. It highlighted that Jio is on track to complete pan India rollout by December 2023.
Jio has extended coverage of its True5G services to over 2,300 cities/towns across India.
“Jio has taken formidable strides in pioneering 5G rollout across the country with unmatched speed of execution. 5G has led to a significant improvement in customer experience, reflected in the higher engagement levels among Jio users,” said Akash M Ambani, chairman of Reliance Jio Infocomm.
Ahead of its earnings announcement, shares of Reliance Industries closed 0.21% higher at ₹2,351 apiece.
